Association for Innovation and Growth in Help of Society and Young People

Association of Ruse in help of society and young people / RAPO/ is a non-profit/non-governmental organization in public interest established in 2014 by 7 motivated young people to promote topics as tolerance, religious understanding, social inclusion for ethnic groups, young entrepreneurs. As an organization, we try to cover needs related to fewer opportunities such as educational, cultural and geographical difficulties through finding, establishing and giving opportunities to our volunteers and society, related to the NGO. We are an NGO with main goals in the field of youth development and support of social needs. Since the creation of the organisation, our main objectives are to support young people and adults in their personal and professional development. Participation through volunteering and showing solidarity within the society is one of our goals to support young people. Mostly, the organization deals with training in socially significant topics related to human rights, building green skills for youth, raising a sense of European active citizenship, and offering activities related to developing entrepreneurial skills that could help young volunteers in their active participation in the community. RAPO has focused on environmental education and youth intervention as socially significant local issues in the last few years such as building a more coherent and tolerant youth society. For that, we use non-formal education and intervention tools to promote actions on social inclusion, gender equality, active citizenship, inclusion through volunteering work, intercultural dialogue by mobilizing young people to make a change in our(hosting) and their(when they go back) region paradigm. We work in the Erasmus+ programme since 2016 when starting more active work on the international level. We have hosted two projects under the previous ESC programme in 2019 and 2020 when we hosted a total of 13 volunteers from 10 different EU and non-EU countries. Our experience counts projects funded under United Nations, UNESCO cultural project and Erasmus+. At the local level, we work on a school mentoring programme that includes 10 professionals and more than 25 youngsters between 7-18 years old. Recently we have started to work in Adult education where we try to improve the level of educational activities offered in schools by teachers by involving them in non-formal activities to increase the level of used non-formal education in the formal curriculum. Except for the international volunteering project where we host young people from various countries, we also have a local solidarity/ and volunteering programme which includes organizing social and cultural charity activities for elderly people and children- local youths serve the local community through a variety of activities during the summer and Christmas period. Our target groups are: 1. Young people between 7-14 years old for projects funded under UNESCO cultural programme. 2. Young people between 13 and 30 years old with fewer opportunities to participate in Erasmus+ and local projects. 3. Adults- teachers social workers, youth workers, entrepreneurs, professionals who would like to improve skills and competencies and use non forma and informal educational methods. Our main activities are: active participation and organizing Erasmus+ project, organizing Cultural UNESCO projects where children between 7-16 years get involved in festival preparations and perform arts for social good, organizing local initiatives related to a green and healthy environment by involving young people with fewer opportunities in workshops , trainings and info sessions; We deliver also workshops and trainings for young and elderly people who would like to developing digital skills and competencies. We are organizing charity events supporting various causes, workshops for young people to develop soft skills, workshops for young people to develop entrepreneurship skills to ease their entrance at the job market,